It is a Bollywood movie whose lead character Dharampal is a Hindu man, stereotypical of Muslim community, oblivious to the fact that he was born a Muslim. All hell breaks loose when he comes to know about his Muslim origins.

The movie failed at the box office but the lesson it carries strikes at the very core of the situation in the country today. Does it matter whether a person is a Hindu or a Muslim if his acts are right? Does it matter in a marriage that the wife goes to a temple to pray while the husband bows his head in a mosque or that the wife wears a burkha and the husband a tilak on his forehead?

Apparently in this country and in this age, it does. And some people from our society think of it as their moral duty to correct everyone who has fallen on the wrong path. Sadly, our society over the years has failed to recognise basic human rights and it continues to do so .

Few months back, it was Hadiya struggling at the doors of the Supreme Court trying to validate her marriage to a Muslim man, today it was the couple in Ghaziabad Court who became a soft target of the Self Proclaimed protectors of religion.

On 24th July, a couple reached Ghaziabad court to get married. Even as they were discussing about the procedure, a crowd of right-wing extremists barged into the advocate’s chamber and beat up the man. His only crime was that he was a Muslim man who wanted to marry a Hindu girl. In an another incident in Barmer district of Rajasthan, a dalit man was lynched to death for having an affair with a Muslim girl.

As the law and order situation deteriorates in the country, self-appointed moralists are out on the streets dictating what to eat, what to wear and whom to marry. They are oblivion to the inclusive nature of our Indian society and to the Fundamental Rights in our Constitution.

All they see is that one wears a burkha and the other a tilak, that one celebrates Eid and the other Diwali, that one bows her head in a temple while the other in a mosque, that one prays to Ram and the other to Allah. They don’t see that in these prayers they wish to be together, that in celebrating Eid or Diwali they celebrate our common culture and that in mosque or a temple they bow before the same God.

Whether a man from religion A and a woman from religion B choose before or after marriage that one of them converts to the religion of the other or both of them choose to convert to a third religion, all remain cases of individual choice and the society has no business interfering. A marriage like for all other aspects of one’s life is a matter of individual outlook and it can not and must not be made a political diktat in Indian Democracy!